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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>I WAS A YOUNG MOTHER BEING STIFLED BY BLINDNESS<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>by Barbara Pierce<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Wife of a college professor, mother of three children, career woman, civic leader all of these terms apply to Barbara Pierce, the President of the National<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Federation of the Blind of Ohio. She did not achieve the poise and self-confidence that she possesses today without going through a period of soul-searching<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>and doubt. The National Federation of the Blind was a key factor in helping her find her way. So were her own introspection and self-analysis. Here is<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>how she remembers it.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In 1973 I was twenty-eight years old and a faculty wife living in a small midwestern town with my loving husband and three small children.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The main complication in my life was my blindness. My vision had deteriorated since childhood, and even though I had been introduced to Braille and the<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>white cane as a teenager, I could still use my vision for some things, so I told myself I was not really blind. Since college, though, I had had to admit<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>that my eyes now provided me with almost no useful information except which lights were on.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Despite the profound handicap of vision loss, I grew up in a happy family with a younger brother who was understanding of the extra time my parents spent<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>working with me. They were truly amazing people.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Dad was easy-going and positive. Lots of homework? No problem; we'd dig our way through it no regret at sacrificing his quiet evening. As an engineer he<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>had no difficulty with the science and math, but German and diagramming sentences presented challenges to us both.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In the fifties there was little academic support for families whose blind children attended public schools. We were on our own to devise alternative methods<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>of doing my work. So I diagrammed sentences in the air for Dad to transcribe onto paper and learned to do complex algebra in my head.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>My mother was far more distressed about my blindness. Being a mother, she worried. Having an active conscience, she wondered if she were somehow responsible<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>for my condition. I was dimly aware of her pain, but she never let it stand in the way of my growing up.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I went camping with the Girl Scouts, learned to cook and iron, and did my share of household chores. She never communicated her anxiety about my safety.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>She taught me about colors, make-up, and doing my hair. She saw to it that I learned to dress appropriately even though I couldn't tell what other people<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>were wearing, and she suffered with me when the boys I liked ignored me or treated me like a sister. My senior year she first rejoiced with me and then<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>began worrying again when I fell in love.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Thanks to my parents' support, I graduated second in my suburban high school class. I entered Oberlin College the following September and for the first<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>time in my life had to face the prospect of getting my work done without a full-time reader/secretary at my disposal.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I learned quickly about hiring and supervising readers, and I worked hard. But I played hard too, taking part in college organizations and dating, though<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>my heart was still entangled with my high school flame, attending a college far away.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The college campus was small and easy to memorize. I used a folding cane that I could make vanish whenever someone presented her (or preferably) himself<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>to walk with me to my destination. I wouldn't allow friends to go out of their way for me, so I often didn't do social things or run errands I would have<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>wanted to because I couldn't find anyone who was going that direction.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>All that changed my senior year when I began to date one of my professors. It was one of those whirlwind romances that are the talk of small, close-knit<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>communities. I graduated from Oberlin with high honors in June and became a faculty wife that September. I felt like a fairy-tale princess.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>By 1973 Bob and I had bought a thirteen-room house that had originally been a dormitory. It was close enough to campus for him to walk to his office and<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>for me to walk downtown and to the pediatrician, where I was going frequently by this time because we had three children: Steven, five; Anne, two; and<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Margaret, born two months prematurely that August.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The things I was doing I could do well. My children were happy, my home was as orderly as any with three small children, my husband's classes met often<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>in our living room and ate home-baked cookies.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>But I was beginning to feel that my life was much more restricted than I wanted it to be. I could not drive. I could not read print. I couldn't even read<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Braille very well because no one had ever encouraged me to work on building my reading speed when I was young. I hated my cane and used it as little as<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>possible. It seemed to shriek to people of my blindness, and everyone knew that blind people couldn't do much. They made brooms in sheltered workshops<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>or tuned pianos. They stood on street corners and sold pencils or, if they were musical, played the accordion. I was not like that.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>But what was I like? What could I do with myself? It was a question that I could put off a little longer because the children were still small enough for<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>me to pretend that I didn't yet want to go back to work.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Never during my struggles did I consider that other blind people might be able to help me. Everyone had always told me that I was not like other blind<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>people. Since I had never known a blind person, I assumed that my friends and family were right. I told myself that I was really a sighted person who couldn't<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>see. I was normal, and nothing that blind people could say would have much relevance to me because, even though my world was limited to the distance I<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>could walk and the information I could glean from my recorded books and what my dear husband had time to read to me, I was not a shuffling, passive, doggedly<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>cheerful blind puppet to be dragged around and handed whatever other people no longer wanted.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Then, in January of 1974, someone brought me a stack of recordings produced by the National Federation of the Blind. He said I might be interested in listening<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>to them. I smiled politely and put them aside with no intention of wasting my time on such twaddle. But very soon thereafter my husband had to be away<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>for a weekend, and the baby came down with her first cold. To complete my misery, I had read and returned every one of the recorded books lent to me by<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>the National Library Service for the blind and Physically Handicapped. I faced the prospect of two days of walking a fussy baby and talking to two toddlers<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>while having nothing to read. I remembered the stack of records and decided that they were better than nothing.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>When Bob came home Sunday afternoon, expecting to find a frantic, ill-tempered wife, he found instead a woman who had been transformed. Poor man, he had<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>to listen to the pent-up flood of discoveries that I had made. He is patient, and he paid close attention as I explained that I had discovered fifty thousand<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>people who believed that blindness didn't have to consign one to poverty and helplessness. I had learned that as a member of the general public, I had<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>been brainwashed like everyone else about blindness. I realized that my dislike of my cane was really rejection and denial of blindness. I had been working<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>hard at doing things as well as sighted people not because blindness need not be more than a nuisance in my life, but because I didn't want anyone to think<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>of me as blind. Dimly I had begun to understand that if I were ever to step beyond the confines of my current narrow life, it would be because I had come<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>to terms with myself as I wasța blind woman with energy and dreams and the capacity to fulfill them.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>No profound insight can remake a person overnight, but it is accurate to say that from then on I was a different person. I organized a local chapter of<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>the Federation in my county. As I did so, I discovered that I could help other blind people who hadn't yet learned even the little I knew about coming<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>to accept themselves and being proud of who they were. I also discovered just how many blind people had suffered real discrimination at society's hands.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I learned that I have been incredibly lucky. No one had tried to take my children away from me because I was a blind parent. This still happens to blind<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>parents today despite the overwhelming evidence that blindness does not prevent a person from being a good parent.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Each time I have looked for a job, I have found one. I learned that blind people face a 70% unemployment rate not because only 30% of us are capable to<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>holding down good jobs, but because employers don't believe that we can.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>As I became active in the National Federation of the Blind, I met blind people who simply did not recognize the boundaries I had always lived with. They<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>traveled all over the country and the world independently, getting to their planes, retrieving their luggage, and coping with ground transportation without<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>thinking twice about the task.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I discovered that I could do these things as well, and I cannot express the sensation of freedom I had packing for a plane trip and feeling no anxiety<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>about the logistics of getting where I needed to go.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I discovered blind people who read Braille at 400 words a minute. Though I had been cheated as a child by not being forced to master the Braille code thoroughly,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I could begin as an adult to change the situation.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The Federation also gave me personal fulfillment and a circle of wonderful friends who knew and loved me for who I was. I had work to do.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I learned new skills. As a result of these new skills and the self-confidence I have learned from the National Federation of the Blind, I applied for a<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>job as a college administrator at Oberlin and got it. There I had a chance to educate many people about the abilities of the blind. I also had plenty of<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>opportunities to learn to juggle husband, children, home, full-time job, and volunteer work.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I have moved on now to magazine editing. My children are almost grown, and my new job requires that I travel frequently. I can hardly remember the days<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>when airports made my stomach turn inside out. Blindness is one of the characteristics that define me. It means that I can't drive a car or read print.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>It also means that I am organized and have a well-trained mind two characteristics that most of my friends would give a great deal to possess.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I still have room to grow. None of us has ever become all that we can. I frequently discover little pockets of cowardice and insecurity in myself, but<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>by and large, I am free thanks to the National Federation of the Blind.<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>